“Permanence was never the test of folk art.”

— Esther McCoy from Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village

Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey (1896–1988) began building Bottle Village in her 60s, a collection of bottle-constructed houses that became her life’s work. The site housed her extensive pencil collection, her assemblage artworks, herself, and her family. Visitors periodically visited and Prisbrey would host, give tours, sing songs, and tell stories. As an artist-built environment and Prisbrey’s home, Bottle Village is the embodiment of an evolving social sculpture. Formed in July 1979, Preserve Bottle Village Committee is a non-profit organization created to acquire and preserve the historic site when it was facing demolition after Prisbrey had to sell the site to a private developer. In the context of Prisbrey’s vision, the task of preservation becomes a question, how would she want her work to be viewed, restored, or rebuilt when she is no longer around? These imperatives become essential to providing a direction forward for Bottle Village. 

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture is pleased to present a public discussion with writer, curator and art conservator, Rosa Lowinger and architectural historian and former Acting Director of Preserve Bottle Village Committee, Daniel Paul. They will discuss their individual practices in relation to the ongoing preservation of Bottle Village in the context of the exhibition Kathi Hofer and Preserve Bottle Village Committee. 

ROSA LOWINGER
Rosa Lowinger is a Cuban-born American art and architectural conservator and writer. She is the founder of RLA Conservation, LLC (www.rlaconservation.com), a practice with offices in Los Angeles and Miami. Rosa is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation, the Association for Preservation Technology, and American Academy in Rome, where she conducted research on the history of vandalism to art and public space. Her books include: Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub (Harcourt: 2006) and the recently published Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair (Row House: 2023). She will be the keynote speaker at the 2024 Docomomo US Conference to be held in Miami.

DANIEL PAUL
Daniel Paul began historic preservation volunteer work at Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village 30 years ago, just one week after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. During his 15 years onsite, he coordinated with a noted rebuilding team, State Offices, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency for damage repair monies, he authored public facing materials, and in 1996, wrote the National Register of Historic Places landmark application that helped protect Bottle Village. Daniel holds a master’s degree in art history from the California State University Northridge. His master’s thesis presented the origin story of 1970s-era Late-Modern glass skin office park architecture.

Related Exhibition

Join us for the opening reception of Kathi Hofer and Preserving Bottle Village Committee . This exhibition brings together original bottles from Tressa “Grandma” Prisbrey’s collapsed Bottle Village structures, Prisbrey’s assemblage artwork, and works by Hofer placing them in a “magic circle” at the Mackey Apartment Garage Top Gallery where the objects and artifacts relate and resemble one another (ex)changing their value and meaning.

KATHI HOFER

Kathi Hofer (b. 1981, Hallein, Austria) works conceptually across media. She is interested in forms of everyday creativity and their specific freedoms and constraints as well as in the relationship between artistic work and socio-economics. In her installations she integrates found objects, images, stories, and practices that have strongly determined the roles and values within the environments she grew up in or moves within today. In addition to her installation-based work, she has recently turned to immaterial practices and experimental forms of storytelling. In this context, she has initiated improvised encounters between actors from different cultural fields or backgrounds in public or semi-private space staging unannounced performances that took place in the absence of an audience. Of these unrehearsed, unnoticed actions photographic evidence remains that is open for further interpretation. Recent exhibitions include Continental Baths (London, UK), the MAK Center for Art and Architecture (Los Angeles, US), Winona (Brussels, Belgium), Tokyo Arts and Space (Tokyo, Japan), Austrian Cultural Forum (Warsaw, Poland), MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna, Austria), and mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Vienna, Austria). Her book “Grandma” Prisbrey’s Bottle Village was published by Spector Books, Leipzig (2021).

PRESERVING BOTTLE VILLAGE COMMITTEE

Preserve Bottle Village Committee is a non-profit organization formed in July 1979 to acquire and restore the privately-owned historic property. In the intervening decades, dedicated members have been responsible for ensuring the protection of Bottle Village. The long-term objective of the organization is to allow public access on a regular basis to the fully improved and restored Bottle Village. In 2012, the organization initiated a comprehensive restoration approach for the entire one-third acre site and its historic components. For the Garage Exchange exhibition, Preserve Bottle Village Committee board member Katherine Weisman collaborated closely with Kathi Hofer, the MAK Center, and RLA retrieving and selecting artifacts.

Related Exhibition